


compassion fatigue

by KathrynShadow



Series: Cataclysm [1]
Category: League of Legends
Genre: Animal Death, Assassins & Hitmen, Backstory, Blood, Character Study, Child Death, Gen, Growing Up, Infanticide, Mild Gore, Self-Harm, children killing children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:39:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8006056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathrynShadow/pseuds/KathrynShadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It will only take a moment. One second, one movement–she won’t even have to aim, any cut or stab at all from a dagger of this size will kill it. She needn’t keep her nerve afterwards because she can’t take it back.</p><p>Only a second.</p><p>Katarina swings her blade down.</p><p>--</p><p>I WANTED TO EXPLORE THE CONCEPT OF HER 'LOOK AT ME I'M SO SADISTIC AND EEEVIL' BEING A SELF-DEFENSE MECHANISM AND I WANTED TO EXPLORE THE CONCEPT OF WHERE HER LIMITS ARE, WHO IS OFF-LIMITS FOR HER TO KILL, AND WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF SHE WERE ORDERED TO KILL THEM, BUT <i>I NEVER WANTED THIS</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	compassion fatigue

**Author's Note:**

> TL;DR: Exploring all of the awful implications of raising someone specifically to be a ruthless killer. Writing this made me feel like a bad person, but I'm kind of proud of it nonetheless.
> 
> Minor bit of context: I personally headcanon that Katarina studied in Ionia prior to the Invasion. My reasoning is this:
> 
> 1\. Her kit bears a strong resemblance to the feel of the ninjas'.  
> 2\. There's nothing remarkable about Bouncing Blades or Sinister Steel and there's no way of confirming that there wouldn't be lotuses in Noxus, but "Shunpo" is definitely not a word that came from the mainland.  
> 3\. I don't care how good you are; what Katarina has are advanced techniques. There's no way she could have picked those up from merely observing her opponents when the war started, and absolutely no one is going to look at an enemy assassin and go "yep, let's teach her our fighting styles!"  
> 4\. Given how isolated Ionia seems to be, learning their stabby tricks would actually be a fantastic idea. The people she's mainly sent after are on the mainland; they wouldn't expect it, and they definitely wouldn't know how to counter it as well.

Katarina is four years old and she is watching her mother die.

She doesn’t remember where or how, only this: a beautiful dress soaked and streaked in crimson, Lady du Couteau’s hands white on her own throat as if she can hold the wound closed. Blood pulses between her fingers, and it’s a darker blood than Katarina has ever seen from scraped knees and bumped elbows–nearly black and tinged with purple.

Katarina cries, but not because she understands. She cries because her mother is crying and can’t quite make a sound anymore, and so Kat must do it for her.

There is a thud, a gasping crumple. She watches as something unnameable and incomprehensible fades in front of her, until the person turns into a _thing_ , a lump of cooling flesh leaking out onto the blood-slickened stone.  
It is the only part of her mother she remembers.

* * *

Katarina is seven years old and she is watching a butcher slaughter pigs. She is perched on a balcony, her face pressed against the bars while her overwhelmed nursemaid fusses over Cassiopeia. Below her, the entire square is taken up with livestock and people and the stink of both, hooves slipping on the blood of their predecessors, a cacophony of bleats and squawks and screeches.

The butcher works like a machine. His cohort shoves a stunned and stumbling animal towards him. He catches it, steadies it, and slits its throat in one smooth motion. Shoves it along to the next butcher before it even has time to die. Again. Again. The pigs’ squealing is a melody, the motion of his hand the rhythm, and there’s a kind of beauty in his skill.

The nursemaid tugs at Katarina’s arm. She follows, but she can hear the sound of the haphazard slaughterhouse all the way down the street. When they get home, she spends all afternoon catching flies and crushing off their heads, pretending.

* * *

Katarina is nine years old and she is watching her favorite hound wag its tail at her as she approaches with blade drawn. Her father stands behind her, his silent presence both encouraging her on and forbidding her to turn away.

The dog, Sanka, has been old for as long as Katarina can remember. She’s been sick for a month. Killing her now is a mercy. It will make everything better, it’s helping. It’s helping.

Kat still doesn’t _want_ to–but she mustn’t disappoint Papa, and she might need to kill people she loves more than Sanka when she grows up. So she has to.

The hound knows something’s wrong, senses the tension, but trusts too much to suspect its cause. She struggles to sit up. Her tongue gives a warm, wet sweep across Katarina’s cheek, comforting.

It’s a mercy. It’s helping. She’s making everything _better_.

The General scratches Sanka behind the ear before taking her muzzle and gently tilting her head up.

* * *

Katarina is eleven years old and she is watching an old man’s blood soak through her clothing for the first time. The knife in her hand is sticky and slick all at once, her fingers slipping on the hilt and then drying onto each other a second later. Everything is red–she can taste it on her lips, feel it on her skin, the stench clinging thick and heavy in the air. She thinks it’s in her hair too, but she can’t tell from the color.

He didn’t look surprised to see her, and that’s the look that sticks in her memory–but he was old, and he was weak, and death was coming in one form or another anyway. A good first assignment, one picked especially for her; he had no tricks, no way to escape even a child assassin with a hand shaking from–from–from excitement.

She leaves the corpse lying in its bed and slips back into the night without a sound.

* * *

Katarina is twelve years old and she is watching a baby giggle at the light dancing on her blade.

Her father was angry. It was too soon to give her a target like this; she was a child, she shouldn’t kill other children. He gave her the option to refuse, said he’d take it on himself if necessary, but… but if it was too soon to give her this, then how much would it mean if she could still do it? To take a challenge that she should never have been offered, an assignment that seasoned killers balked at, and succeed?

(Besides, it was only _too soon_. She would do this eventually, one way or another. There was no sense running.)

Everyone else in the house is alive. Everyone else in the house will remain alive, at least for a time. The family held a traitor–she isn’t hiding here, of course, but she is somewhere, and Noxus will find her. The baby dies first; it has no information to give. It makes sense.

If she fails, Papa will not blame her. If she fails, it’s alright; she can come home and there will be no discussion, no consequences, no judgement.

Not from him, at least.

Kat is frozen, leaning over the crib, her eyes fixed on the infant while it wriggles. What does it want? What will it want? What could it be, or grow up to be, if its cradle was not slated to be its deathbed?

It will only take a moment. One second, one movement–she won’t even have to aim, any cut or stab at all from a dagger of this size will kill it. She needn’t keep her nerve afterwards because she can’t take it back.

Only a second.

Katarina swings her blade down. The baby squeals when it dies, just like the pigs did, and she leaps from the window before she has time for any emotion but _flee, flee, flee before it catches you._

(What “it” is, she doesn’t know.)

* * *

Katarina is twelve years old and she is turning her favorite dagger over in her hands. She has cleaned the dead infant’s blood from the blade, but she can still smell it on her skin. Perhaps she should bathe again–no, someone would wonder about that. She did well. She should be proud. She did well.

It had been so… _easy_. All of that potential gone in less time than it took her to blink, and it hadn’t taken any effort at all. The knife had cut through that soft, unmarked skin so quickly that she wonders–she wonders why.

Why her?

Is she different? Is it always that simple? Heart pounding, she hikes her nightgown up her legs, rests the edge of the dagger against her thigh where no one will see it if it cuts her. She dares to press it down, to draw it to the side.

The blade slips into her flesh as easily as it does anyone else’s. Her blood wells to the surface just like anyone else’s.

She isn’t different. She isn’t special. She can die too, just as quickly, just the same.

Kat wipes the knife off and puts it away, terrified for reasons she cannot name.

* * *

Katarina is thirteen years old and she is watching flies crawl atop their detached wings. She does not kill them. Their suffering fascinates her, like a leash around her throat or leaden shackles around her stomach, keeping her there. Do they feel pain, she wonders? Is she a monster to them, some kind of vengeful god, or do they even notice their disfigurement at all?

One of them trips over his own detached limb, stumbling in confusion. She–she laughs, after a moment. She laughs, and that is better.

* * *

Katarina is fourteen years old and she is watching a fellow student going through his forms. He is safe. Her hair is black, her name is changed, and she won’t step foot in this land again–he is safe to know and safe to like. She won’t have to kill him.

* * *

Katarina is seventeen years old and she is watching an old friend bleed out under her knives. The telltale crimson has started to creep back into her hair, the black dye washing out in her weeks back home, but it’s not enough to pretend that she is someone else.

She had to do it. She had to.

An apology tries to crawl out of her, but she kills it before it has the chance to form.

* * *

Katarina is twenty years old and she is watching hardened soldiers lash out in impotent terror as she cuts them down one by one. She is invincible, a war goddess made human, steel and blood and laughter. Blood drips down her face from a wound that nearly took out her eye and she cackles as she slashes open another throat, vanishing into the night without another scratch on her.

* * *

Katarina is twenty-three years old and she is watching a little boy hide in a closet. She has already killed his entire family; he bothered to hide, and she couldn’t risk letting anyone escape just to track down a child who isn’t going anywhere anyway. He is the only one left before her assignment is over.

(His face is nothing like, but his eyes are the same as Talon’s–shadowed and cautious and hateful.

He will die regardless. Death at her hand is kinder than the alternatives; he just doesn’t know it. She’s doing him a favor; anything else would make him suffer more.

There is nothing else to do anyway.)

The boy is scared of her, but he refuses to show it just yet. It’ll happen soon enough. In the meantime, Kat leans against the wall, spinning a blood-spattered dagger as she waits for him to make a move.

“You might as well run, boy,” she says through the vice in her throat. “It’s more fun for the both of us.”

He hesitates, then slams the door open and makes a desperate break for the door. Katarina whirls to chase him down, a dagger thudding into his back before he has the chance to turn a corner.

She swallows the bile in her gut and tells herself it’s joy.

**Author's Note:**

> My personal interpretation of Marcus is that he was actually a wonderful father. It's just that he was part of a noble military family in _Noxus. _Being a good father in those circumstances means making sure your child can survive in your homeland; either he breaks Kat or Noxus will, and Noxus won't put the pieces back together afterwards.__
> 
>  
> 
> _  
> _Not that that makes it any less tragic. I'd say it makes it more so, because Marcus was honestly doing the best he could for his kids. It's just that "the best" in that situation is a little bit horrific._  
>  _


End file.
